Light Bending Backwards
by Insane Troll Logic
Summary: The Doctor infiltrates the Time Agency. Jack suffers the consequences.


**Title:** Light Bending Backwards  
**Rating**: PG  
**Disclaimer**: Doctor Who is emphatically not mine  
**Summary**: The Doctor infiltrates the Time Agency. Jack suffers the consequences.  
**Spoilers: **Through series three.  
**Author's Note: **Great big thanks to the awesome lightningbug who beta read for me and is largely responsible for all my grammar and most of the sense making.

_**Light Bending Backwards**_

The Doctor wakes up in a holding cell. Above him is a man in a sharp black suit, clearly a government official. The chief of the Time Agency he remembers vaguely. He's been caught by the Time Agency.

"Doctor John Smith," he said curtly, "Who are you really?"

"You don't want to know," the Doctor says evenly. "Besides, what's the fun in asking _who_ when you can ask _what_? That's the interesting part."

The voice coming from his lips is strange, new—a different tongue suited to a different accent speaking in a different voice, but at the same time it's oddly familiar.

"Cute, Doctor Smith. We'll get there in good time. Right now all I want to know is who you are."

When taking aliases, the Doctor tries not to use the names of former companions. Especially not when he's in their relative time periods. That only ever causes trouble.

It's funny how quickly his rules change, how quickly _he_ can change with each regeneration. The voice still sounds wrong coming from his lips and he expects to fumble for his words, but they come with surprising ease. "I'm Captain Jack Harkness."

* * *

Here's the thing about the Doctor: 

The Doctor does not like the Time Agency. He doesn't mind the principle, at least the initial one. He likes history, everyone should get the chance to experience history. He doesn't even mind their meddling. (His companions have told him more than once that he's a chronic meddler.) He doesn't even mind that they're amateurs, because really, everyone's an amateur at one point.

But when they start tearing holes in the space-time continuum, the Doctor has to worry.

* * *

One of his companions, this scrawny, freckled-face kid named Justin has the following theory on regeneration: 

No race, no matter how advanced, can possibly rewrite their entire biological structure from scratch. There has to be a template somewhere, someone whose DNA the Doctor has inadvertently plagiarized. He refuses to believe that it's random. Odds are, Justin insists, there's some doppelganger off in time wearing his face.

Justin also doesn't believe two species from two different ends of the galaxy could manage to evolve the exact same external appearance. The Doctor points out that the internal systems are different.

"So?" says Justin. "You've got two hearts and a respitory bypass systems, but you're still going to be taken for human after preliminary tests."

"How would you know that?" the Doctor asks, mildly amused by Justin's frustration.

"Martha Jones told me," Justin says. "You're about the most human alien in existence."

His ninth incarnation would have gotten snippy about being compared to stupid apes. His tenth would have sprouted into an hour long rant about evolutionary theory and talked until Justin withdrew the question. His eleventh would have strummed up an argument just for the sake of arguing.

The twelfth him, however, kind of sees his point.

* * *

Here's the thing about Jack Harkness: 

He wakes up in the 2449 with a gaping two-year hole his memory wearing nothing but a greatcoat and a vortex manipulator. The coat is circa World War Two and the vortex manipulator is standard issue Time Agency.

So, really, it's no surprise that he picks the 1940s to run his cons.

* * *

Two months after his ninth regeneration, Rose asks him about Jack. 

It's not a surprise. In fact, it's a question that's been on his mind ever since Christmas and he knows it's been on hers as well.

"Where is he?"

That's the part he can answer. "Dunno, spent some time rebuilding Earth in the 51st century, but afterwards, could be anywhere, any time. A resourceful guy like Jack could probably be several places at once. That's the beauty of time travel, isn't it? Looping in on itself, twisting." He's prepared to ramble. The Doctor knows how to talk, to direct conversations back to where he's comfortable and after a few minutes on temporal mechanics, Rose's eyes will start to glaze.

But this time, Rose won't be deterred. "I thought he was dead, you know."

The Doctor goes quiet for a moment and then says, "He was dead. Now he's not."

"How?" Rose asks.

The Doctor falters because that's the question isn't it? The crux of the matter. After all, the time vortex had killed Rose, killed him when it hit him with a full dose. But not Jack, no, a piece of time vortex revives him and lodges itself inside him, and he just keeps on going.

It's not possible. Humans can't hold onto pieces of the time vortex. Their biology just isn't met for it.

Which means Jack isn't human.

And that's something the Doctor doesn't even want to consider.

* * *

When he gets around to taking inventory of his assets, Jack finds the following things in various pockets of his coat: 

Four bits of string in varying sizes.  
One unidentifiable metal contraption.  
One key.  
One pocket watch with a broken clasp.  
One pair of broken spectacles.  
Two paperclips.  
And one picture.

The picture is the strangest item of the group. It is a picture of him standing in between two others. One was a blonde girl, a little trashy, but undeniably attractive. She's got her arm thrown over the shoulder of a second man with rather intense blue eyes. He seems like he's been dragged into the picture against his will. Photo Jack is laughing.

There is nothing in the picture to suggest a time period, or even a location. Jack knows the chances of finding these people are astronomical, impossible.

Which is why he's not at all surprised to find the girl dangling from a rope in the middle world war two.

After all, impossible things happen all the time.

* * *

The Time Agency is depressingly easy to infiltrate. It helps that they recruit loners, the people who look like they have nothing to lose. 

This incarnation of the Doctor certainly looks the part: he's a dark haired, underweight fellow with a scruffy looking brown leather jacket, a perpetual five-o'clock shadow and sharp green eyes. Add this to natural intelligence, and quick decision making, and he's the perfect recruit.

He introduces himself as Doctor John Smith and doesn't reply when people ask him where he got his doctorate.

He keeps expecting to see Jack.

He never does.

* * *

Here's the thing about Time Lords: 

They're kind of essential. If no one was looking out for the universe, it would have imploded a long time ago.

And now there's only one Time Lord left.

Thirteen lives aren't long enough for that kind of responsibility.

But the universe has ways of evolving.

* * *

Immortality, Jack decides sometime between his seventh and twenty seventh death, is kind of a bitch. 

It's hard to stay the same while world around him lives, dies, loves and changes.

He thinks he's starting to understand how the Doctor feels.

* * *

The first time he sees Jack after the Game Station, the other man looks _different_. It's nothing physical. The hair, the cheery grin, the eyes are all the same. 

But there's something different in his demeanor, something different in his soul that cuts through the Doctor like a knife. He knows that look, knows that pain all too well.

There's something in Jack's face that reminds him a little too much of himself.

* * *

The best way for an alien to blow his cover as a human goes something like this: 

Stumble into a rather large chain of corruption in the Time Agency.

Ask too many questions.

Get offed by a gun-for-hire before you can topple the chain of command.

Wake up in a white holding cell as a completely new man.

* * *

Jack gets used to it. He develops a routine, make friends, makes enemies, flirts, laughs, lives, loves. If he's going to live forever, he's going to do it in style. 

He finds invasions, saves the world, hops through time and dives head first into danger. He can afford to be reckless. He's got nothing to lose after all.

And the Doctor's not going to be around forever.

But Jack is.

* * *

After six weeks of testing, the Time Agency deems the Doctor to not be a threat and the chief apologizes and allows him back into the ranks. He reads that for what it is: an experiment, a way to keep him busy, to keep him here for something. 

He knows time agents. He knows the sort of games they play.

So he plays along. He plays along for almost a month, goes on their missions, saves the universe from certain destruction.

And even looking for it, waiting for it, he's completely blindsided when they put their plan into motion.

What can he say? He thought he had at least two years.

* * *

Jack is not the first immortal being the Doctor has met. 

But he is the first one that plunges that chill in his gut, that makes all his senses tell him he has to get out now or suffer the consequences.

It takes him a long time to realize it, but it's the same feeling that plunges into his stomach when he's around a paradox.

He doesn't think much of it because Jack himself is a walking paradox.

* * *

Here's the thing about the Time Agency: 

They like to experiment. They get their hands on a piece of alien technology and they are _going to_ find out how it works.

So really, it's the Doctor's fault for not destroying the Chameleon Arch.

* * *

Let's get one thing straight: 

Jack is not the Face of Boe.

But he's got the Doctor fooled for pretty much the entirety of his tenth incarnation. In fact, the next time the Doctor sees the Face of Boe (which, is incidentally nearly two years after witnessing his supposed death), the Doctor sidles up to him and says, "Jack Harkness."

This, believe it or not, is considered an insult on some of the more sexually repressed planets and it takes the Doctor, some psychic paper, six bananas and roughly twenty minutes of non-stop talking to explain that little misunderstanding.

The Face of Boe finds the entire thing hilarious.

* * *

Here's the thing about regeneration: 

Not even the Doctor knows how it's going to work. He wakes up one morning, takes a look in the mirror and he's a whole new man. New hair, new teeth, new personality, everything untested.

By his last regeneration, the Doctor is practically used to it.

So when he looks in the mirror for the first time to see the thirteenth him and finds a familiar face and hisses, "Son of a _bitch_," he isn't the least bit surprised to find this incarnation cursing after the last one's squeaky clean mouth.

But that's just the thing: he should be.

* * *

The Doctor has run into himself before. It's not at all uncommon. Versions of him are scattered all across time and space. On the other hand, it is rare, exceedingly rare, even for him to turn the corner and run into this version of himself. 

The other him is even more startled. His eyes widen comically and the sonic blaster is raised. The Doctor eyes it disapprovingly, fingering his sonic screwdriver in his pocket.

"Who the hell are you?" the double asks.

"I'm the Doctor?" he replies and because it's only polite, he adds, "Who the hell are you?"

"I'm Captain Jack Harkness," he says. "I know the Doctor and last I heard, he's never looked like me."

The Doctor is quiet for a long, long moment and then he says, "Of course. It makes sense now."

"Sense?" Jack says. "This doesn't make anything resembling sense."

"Two missing years," the Doctor says.

"What?"

"It wasn't just two missing years.

* * *

Here's the thing about memory wipes: 

More often than not, they're a cover for memory rewrites.

(end)


End file.
